Pakistan is touring England for a Test series which is regarded as the toughest of all the series currently going on across the world.
Pakistan Captain Misbah-ul-Haq is given the toughest work to lead his side. He led Pakistan and played all the matches on overseas conditions where he played 44 matches and won 21 and lost 12. In his country, nobody has done this.
Misbah is also his country’s best batsman at the age of 42. He was the most successful Pakistani captain ever. He was the only [akistani captain to score a half century at the Old Trafford. At Lord’s he is not merely the only Pakistani batsman to score a hundred, but also the oldest to score a Test century since 1934.
The captain who helped Pakistan to get rid of the 2010 spot fixing scandal, was born in Mianwali, on the border of Punjab, the other bank of the Indus the former North West Frontier Province.
Misbah is a great fan of former Pakistani captain Imran Khan. Talking about Imran, Misbah said, “I don’t think any boy grows up in Pakistan without playing cricket.
“I can remember right from the start playing at my home, the streets and my school. I had a bit of concrete space in my house and used to play Tests-like matches there with my friends and cousins. We had different sorts of balls and we copied Javed Miandad and Imran Khan, and the West Indies team was also very famous.
“As a cricketer, I used to like Imran. His personality, the way he carried himself… He was a fighter… His qualities that inspired me… That series in England that Pakistan won [in 1987 when Imran was captain] was something to cheer about.
“We have talked a lot, not about this [distant blood relationship with Imran]. He always gives you something that helps you in your life and your cricket.
“As a batsman, my nature is different from Imran’s. I was good at leg-spin, but I learnt you cannot be a part-time leg-spinner. So I thought it better to concentrate on my batting.
While talking about his early life Misbah said it is difficult to take a sport as a profession in his country, “My father never liked me playing any game. He was basically a hockey player and suffered in life because he ended up teaching when he would have been an engineer had he not played hockey.
“In Pakistan, it is difficult to take a sport as a profession. I was doing my masters at the Institute of Leadership and Management in Lahore when I started playing cricket a little bit seriously (Misbah had already done an undergraduate degree in Faisalabad in double maths and physics).
“I thought I could go either to cricket or business administration and management. I decided I had to play cricket for two seasons to see how I go. The first season I got 800 runs for Sargodha and in the next, I got most runs in the Quad-e-Azam Trophy,” Misbah recalled.